Kernel Normal Form
It is proposed that this article be deleted because of the following concern:
If you can address this concern by improving, copyediting, sourcing, renaming, or merging the page, please edit this page and do so. You may remove this message if you improve the article or otherwise object to deletion for any reason. Although not required, you are encouraged to explain why you object to the deletion, either in your edit summary or on the talk page. If this template is removed, do not replace it. The article may be deleted if this message remains in place for seven days, i.e., after 21:43, 5 April 2025 (UTC). Find sources: "Kernel Normal Form" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR Nominator: Please consider notifying the author/project: {{subst:proposed deletion notify|Kernel Normal Form|concern=Fails [[WP:GNG]]}} ~~~~ |
Another editor has reviewed this page's proposed deletion, endorses the proposal to delete, and adds:
If you remove the {{proposed deletion/dated}} tag above, please also remove this {{Proposed deletion endorsed}} tag. |
 | This article relies largely or entirely on a single source. (March 2024) |
Kernel normal form, or KNF, is the coding style used in the development of code for the BSD operating systems. Based on the original KNF concept from the Computer Systems Research Group, it dictates a programming style to which contributed code should adhere prior to its inclusion into the codebase. KNF started out as a codification of how Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie formatted the original UNIX C source code. It describes such things as how to name variables, use indents and the use of ANSI C or K&R C code styles. Each BSD variant has its own KNF rules, which have evolved over time to differ from each other in small ways.
The SunOS kernel and userland also uses a similar indentation style that was derived from AT&T style documents and that is sometimes known as Bill Joy Normal Form. The correctness of the indentation of a list of source files can be verified by a style checker program written by Bill Shannon. This style checker program is called cstyle.[1]
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ Schilling, Jörg (2016-07-13). "Schily Tools: cstyle". SourceForge. Retrieved 2018-03-07.
- Niranjan Kumar, Parvatham (31 October 2013). "Impact of Indentation in Programming". International Journal of Programming Languages and Applications. 3 (4): 21–30. doi:10.5121/ijpla.2013.3403. Retrieved 31 March 2025.
External links
[edit]- : Kernel source file style guide – FreeBSD Kernel Developer's Manual
- : Kernel source file style guide – OpenBSD Kernel Developer's Manual
 | This software-engineering-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |